Cultural Miseducation as Objectification and Consumption of Women’s and Animals’ Bodies

• In Event: Curriculum Studies 10 Years After Jane Roland Martin’s Cultural Miseducation

Abstract

This case study of cultural miseducation will analyze the intersection of women-animal objectification, violence, and consumption. The first presenter will explain how this cycle of domination, which culminates in the metaphorical and/or literal consumption of female bodies, is transmitted and absorbed through cultural miseducation. Current generations are being (mis)educated about animals the way previous generations were (mis)educated about women. As Alice Walker (1988) writes, “there are those who never once have even considered animals’ rights: those who have been taught that animals actually want to be used and abused by us… They are the great-grandchildren of those who honestly thought, because someone taught them this: ‘Women can’t think.’” Such “cultural liabilities,” as Jane Roland Martin terms them, are not transmitted exclusively through schools—though it is important to note that school lunches often pass on to students consumptive practices that promote violence—but in the dynamic social ways in which we learn to make sense of the world. For example, most students are no longer taught in schools that “women can’t think,” yet sexism is nevertheless taught through media, at home, in institutions, etc. Walker’s quote indicates how women are often bound to notions of animality through generational discourse, having been historically treated as not only different, but as less-than-human, irrational creatures. In hyper-consumer cultures like ours, we are taught that animals possess some essential characteristic that makes them inferior commodities for human exploitation—just as it was the essential nature of the inferior, irrational woman to need a man’s rationality. These cultural teachings need to be critiqued and challenged. In embracing animal rights, this analysis will not exclude the crucial conversation on human rights; in fact, this presenter argues that the two movements are interdependent. This study draws on Carol Adams (2006) to analyze the link between women’s and animals’ inferior status in consumer culture, an intersection of subjugation that further fuels the fires of violence—against both women and animals. To end, the presenter will discuss why Martin’s work (including her most recent book, Education Reconfigured [2011] in which she discusses animals and education) helps us work toward critical theorizing that may cultivate the dispositions bold and honest enough to address this uniquely challenging aspect of cultural miseducation.

Author

• Bradley D. Rowe, The Ohio State University